Hello
by Mistress of Azure
Summary: PG just to be safe: A short story about Ryou and his younger sister, Amane, set to Hello by Evanescence.


This is my first post on so please be kind. This is (NO LONGER) a song fic to _Hello_, by Evanescence(, since banned them.Thanks a lot guys.)I fell in love with this song the minute I heard it.

Bakura: You "fell in love" with the whole CD, and you won't let us forget it. You've been playing it for, literally, six hours straight!

…point?

Japanese

Imouto-chan: Little sister

Owari: End

/Word: Bakura to Ryou

Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to the almighty Kazuki Takahashi, and _Hello_ belongs to Evanescence. I, third-rate authoress and high school student that I am, owns zilch!

…unless you count my new, $800 computer that I got for Christmas.

_Playground school bell rings, again_

_Rain clouds come to play, again_

_Has no one told you she's not breathing?_

_-_Hello, by Evanescence. (See! It's not a songfic, it's a quote now! There's no way they can possibly ban QUOTES, can they? >. )

1-2-3-G-O-

"Look…look! It's raining! Don't you love it when it rains? I know you do…you told me, remember? You said you love it because it makes everything seem…fresh, new. And when it stops, there's always a rainbow…_please_ look, please. Just open your eyes and look…please open your eyes, Amane…"

Ryou kept his head down as he walked, carefully studying the ground in front of him before taking another step. Amane always looked around when she walked, so she could see everything, take in the world around her. She always smiled, wavy silvery gold hair fluttering about her pretty smiling face as she twisted her head this way and that.

But she didn't really understand what she saw. She saw the car, hurling around the corner, coming too fast, coming towards her…she knew it was there, but she didn't realize what it meant at that moment. She just kept smiling, kept walking, kept seeing…

Ryou walked past the gates of the schoolyard, watching carefully where he placed his feet. The thought of what might happen if he wasn't careful, what might take place if he didn't pay attention to what was in front of him…it scared him.

Amane wasn't scared.

In his quiet, cautious way, he made his way to the front steps of the school and slowly climbed them, praying quietly to anyone that was listening that today the bullies would leave him alone. Just for today.

/They will. /

Ryou froze, startled, at the voice that came, seemingly, from his mind. He concentrated and imagined that he could feel something, hovering at the back of his mind like another presence…inside him, crawling just beneath the surface…but then it was gone.

The voice was distantly familiar, as if he had heard it a long time ago. And he had. It wasn't really that long, but everything seemed so much farther away now. It seemed like an eternity since those nights when his dear Amane would come into his room, sniffling and complaining about nightmares. He would hold out his arms and she would crawl into bed next to him, and she would smile as he rocked her slowly and muttered a lullaby that he had never heard, in a language he didn't know, echoing the words that he heard from the voice in his mind.

He didn't know where it came from, they were merely pretty words that flowed through his mind and fell from his lips with no conscious effort. He had never given much thought to the voice, passing it off as the nighttime imagination of a ten-year-old boy.

He had never noticed that the arrival of the voice coincided with a birthday present he had received a little over a year before, an ancient necklace that he and his darling imouto-chan used to play with, taking turns wearing it and making up stories about the people who owned it before. Their favorite was one of an orphaned child who became a great thief after he lost everything when an evil ruler had destroyed his home. The little boy had won the beautiful golden ring in a game with the ruler's close friend, a wicked sorcerer. It had magical powers, and with it he defeated the terrible king and locked his soul away.

Amane had smiled as she listened to her big brother tell the story, clapping her hands and crying out happily that her brother had the best imagination. She would often ask him to tell the tale of the brave thief king, and Ryou would smile and say the words as the voice told them to him.

He walked through the door of the classroom and took his seat in the back of the room. The other children stared at him and whispered to their friends about the "freak" and tried to guess why he had been absent for the past week. No one asked him, of course, and no one wondered if he was okay. They let their imaginations run wild instead.

One little girl sat and stared at him for a few minutes while her friends called him names and made fun of him until she couldn't take it anymore. She snapped at them to shut up and stop being such stuck up pricks, then, when she had effectively shocked them into silence, she stood up and made her way over to his desk. She touched his arm gently and looked at him with concern. "Are you all right?"

He looked up at her with large brown eyes. He knew her…her name was Charisse. He remembered once looking up her name in a book of name meanings. It meant grace, beauty, and kindness. It suited her. She was certainly beautiful, and today she was even more so. Ryou hadn't noticed before that her hair was the same white blond color of Amane's. And she _was_ kind.

At least, she was the only one who wasn't mean to him.______

He gave her a small smile. "Yes, I'm fine. Thank you for asking, though."

Charisse frowned. He was so polite! She didn't understand why everyone was so awful to him. He seemed like a nice person. Others would make fun of his shy nature and unique looks, but she thought he was rather handsome.

Not that she would ever say so aloud. As nice as she was, she wouldn't risk losing her friends.

"Are you sure?"____

"Yes. I'm perfectly all right. Really!" Ryou heard himself say, though he himself wasn't commanding the words. He felt himself smile wider and was helpless to stop it. Charisse gave him a doubtful look and walked away.

For the rest of school, he did everything in this way, moving mechanically, as if he were a puppet, watching himself with a detached feeling, powerless to control his actions. He gave up trying to, and spent the rest of the day pretending that it was all a dream, and any moment, his Amane would wake him and ask him to hold her and sing her to sleep with the Thief's Lullaby.__

He walked home in his same careful way, avoiding strangers and keeping his eyes directly in front of him. Stopping at a street corner, he waited for the light to change so he could cross safely with the group of people who were gathered there. Ryou looked around at them, imagining who they were and how, because of their lives so far, they had all come to be at this corner, waiting to cross the busy intersection. With a sigh, he stopped mentally writing their biographies. He had no reason to create stories anymore.

He had no one to tell them to.

Just before the light turned, one more car drove by, hurrying to make it past without having to stop. Ryou's eyes widened and for a moment, the world seemed to slow down while an old, dark green car passed. He could almost see her standing there, halfway across the street, as the car sped toward her, too fast to stop…fast enough to kill…

And then she was gone, disappearing as the car continued on towards its destination, never stopping. The people were crossing now. He shook himself and followed them.

A minute later he stopped. He tilted his head back and stared up at the sky as the raindrops fell on his face, twins to the tears he had been crying as he held her hand in the hospital room, whispering their secret song. She was seven.

A faint smile touched his lips. "Look, Amane. It's raining. You love it when it rains. And when it stops, there's always a rainbow…"

Owari

sniff I love that song…I hope you enjoyed this, considering it took me over two hours, it's not that long and it's one o'clock in the morning…yawn


End file.
